Update – May 30 – It looks like the resource usage issues are still occurring. The site may go down from time to time in the near future until I can work with my ISP to figure this out… please bear with me. The original message follows.

Upgrades to the Site

We had to shut down last week because the site was putting tremendous load on my ISP’s server. Because there was no concomitant spike in traffic, I believe the excess load was either due to a denial-of-service attack or some sort of memory leak or other bug with the content management software I use. The ISP applied all security patches on their end and it kept happening, so the only thing left to do was to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of the content management software and see if that fixes the problem, be it security- or performance-related.

I took the opportunity to make some organizational and functional changes to the site:

• Users can now choose to use a rich-text editor when they create comments and forum topics. Existing users who wish to use the rich-text editor by default need to change the appropriate setting in their user profiles.
• Users can also upload and embed inline images into their content, regardless of whether they use the rich-text editor or not. (Go nuts, Chris J…)
• I changed the manner in which comments are displayed. While threading is nice, it made it hard to find new comments. It additionally caused layout problems if the nesting went too deep, forcing people to read long, thin columns of text. (This latter would have caused even more layout problems had people decided to post images into deeply-nested comments.) So from now on, comments will be displayed in flat, chronological order. If you want to refer to a specific comment already made, you can "quote" the relevant part of other comment’s text by italicizing it, putting it in a different color, etc. – which is easy now because of the rich-text editor.
• As you can see, I moved my two big summary articles (Evidence of a Bubble/Risk of a Decline) to be “stuck” at the top of the housing commentary list. I apologize if this is a minor inconvenience for regulars, but I think it’s important that new visitors read that background material first, and it just wasn’t prominent enough before.
• I’ve recast the the article categories to be simpler and more appropriate to the content being generated.
• Unfortunately, the new version of the "email subscriptions" functionality does not work with my ISP’s database version. I will request an upgrade, but in the meantime, you won’t receive any email subscriptions of site content. The next best thing is to use the RSS feeds at the lower right of the page. Update: It is not a database compatibility issue as I initially thought. I’ve wrestled with the subscriptions functionality all afternoon and still can’t get it to work, so I’m afraid we’ll have to do without unless and until the subscription module developers issue an update. Update to the update: upon further wrassling I have gotten subscriptions working – hooray! Unfortunately all old subs were lost; you will have to recreate subscriptions with the “my subscriptions” link on the left.

If you find any bugs or problems, please make a note in the comments below.

A Change of Direction

Some changes had been brewing since well before the big server debacle, and this seems as good a time as any to discuss them.

In the near future I will be joining an independent investment management and financial planning firm. I am very excited about this opportunity and I will share more details soon. The bad news is that, because of the enormous amount of regulatory oversight of the securities industry, there are going to have to be some changes here at Piggington World Headquarters.

The crux of the issue is that nothing I’ve written can be available to the public without someone at my soon-to-be broker/dealer (a company that, among other things, handles all compliance aspects for my new firm) having read and approved it beforehand. This includes everything I’ve written in the past, regardless of subject matter. Update: Since at least one person made the wrong assumption on what this reviewing is all about, let me clarify: the reviewing is to ensure that I am not violating NASD regulations by recommending specific securities and other things that will never happen on this site. The subject matter of the site is entirely irrelevant to regulators; therefore, no content will ever be changed. The point is that the broker/dealer has to review everything so that they can tell NASD that they have reviewed everything I’ve written. In other words, there will be no qualitative changes, but there will, as discussed below, be quantitative changes.

In order to prevent the gentleman who does the reviewing (who is a perfectly nice guy and has a whole full-time job that does not involve reviewing piggington.com content) from plunging headlong into madness, I will be making the following changes:

• Postings will be less frequent (though probably more in-depth, since there is now a certain barrier to entry).
• I will no longer be able to participate in forum discussions.
• I do not wish to cause potential regulator confusion by having material that I’ve written on the same page as material written by someone else; therefore, I will be soon be shutting off the article comment capability. (The forum can be used to discuss specific articles if desired).
• Since all prior content has to be approved, and pertaining to the points above, I will:
  • Remove my comments from prior forum topics.
  • Hide all prior article comments.
  • Separate the article wheat from the chaff — i.e., remove old articles that are now dated or for some other reason are not worth forcing upon the already overwhelmed reviewer.

The End of Premium Content

I will also be abandoning the premium content model. I originally started charging a fee to offset the rather weighty cost of the DataQuick data that allowed me to do in-depth monthly analysis. I also hoped to get a little recompense for the enormous amount of time I spent putting all the information together.

Well, my partner in the new firm has MLS access and is able to attain monthly statistics for me to chart out, obviating the need for DataQuick’s product (with which I had become frustrated anyway). And as for that second thing, I probably would have gotten a better hourly wage flipping condo signs.

I will do one more "cycle" of premium reports so all recent monthly subscribers get their money’s worth (I shut off the ability to sign up as of a couple weeks ago). Yearly subscribers from back in the old days will receive a prorated refund by mail.

While we’re on the subject, I should note that due to the emergency server upgrades, the monthly reports will be out a little later than usual.

Premium content will stay locked down for a while in fairness to those who ponied up; however, it will eventually be opened up for public access.

What Won’t Change

The one thing that won’t be changing is the purpose of this site, which is the provision of honest and fact-based analysis with the intent to help people make good financial decisions. I hope it continues to serve in this capacity and I thank everyone for bearing with the ongoing changes.